When I look back to my first James Bond movie I am surprised by how true it was to the vision I saw in the few Ian Fleming books I had read … well, at least in its first part. There was adventure, there were people, there were human motivations. James Bond wore a hat. There were no special effects to speak of, really, until the end, when Dr. No’s complex on Crab Key went BOO-OO-OO-OOM. Similarly in From Russia With Love. Then came Goldfinger with his industrial-strength laser, and Thunderball with its underwater battles. And in You Only Live Twice the New Bond hit his stride, with space crocodiles, the fabulous autogyro Little Nell (“Q”, the inimitable and lately irreplaceable Desmond Llewellyn, hitting his stride), and a horde of techno-Ninjas.

I haven’t counted, but I think this is James Bond’s 20th outing in twice that many years. And, true to the post-Fleming vision of Bond (and of many other movies), the technology and special effects dominate.

Bond (Pierce Brosnan) and two companions are sent to North Korea to prevent the evil and bad-tempered Colonel Moon (Wil Yun Lee) from providing an army’s worth of high-tech weaponry to one side in an African civil war, in return for a fortune in UN-embargoed conflict diamonds. ⁽¹⁾ After a really delightful hovercraft demolition derby — the demolition derby has been a feature of every Bond film since Diamonds Are Forever — Moon is drowned and Bond is captured and held for fourteen months in North Korea while undergoing every torment known to the sadistic minds of the Korean hard-liners. The sequel indicates that these included regular visits to a weight room and lots and lots of biofeedback training. Then Bond is traded back to the West, in return for Moon’s most ruthless henchman Zao (Rick Yune), and fade to opening credits.

Escaping from the attentions of MI-6 who, along with the Americans, believe that he might have turned traitor, Bond finds himself in Hong Kong, from which, with the help of a sympathetic Chinese intelligence agency, he goes to Havana, where he encounters the enigmatic Jinx (Halle Berry) and wipes out a Cuban gene therapy lab where, with the help of DNA transplants, whole new identities and appearances are created. Then on to London and an encounter with the evil and bad-tempered nouveau riche industrialist Gustav Graves who has made a super-fortune by discovering an Icelandic diamond mine which produces diamonds chemically indistinguishable from conflict diamonds (both, one presumes, are, like other diamonds, pure carbon). This brings Bond to Iceland, where a large part of the film takes place, and eventually back to Korea, to save the South — and the West — from a horrible plot launched by the usual hard-line elements. ⁽²⁾ If you like action, this last part is especially worth seeing.

There are motifs from other films that have been reused. The scene in which Graves’ henchman Mr. Kil (Lawrence Makoare) is Killed is somewhat reminiscent of the laser scene from Goldfinger; similarly, the fate of those in the aircraft in the last part of the film. The “Icarus” satellite is a direct descendant of the one in Diamonds Are Forever. And, swelp me God, I could almost swear that, as Jinx makes her way through the airplane’s kitchen in that last part, she looks around with an expression that says I know this place from somewhere — perhaps her role as the heroic stewardess Jean in the non-Bond aircraft-hijacking film Executive Decision? The invisible car is, however, a new creation from the new “Q” (whom Bond refers to as “Quartermaster”).

Well, I have always enjoyed high-tech effects and lots of explosions, and this film provides both (as well as a rather nicely done swordfight). But I always have the sneaking feeling that I should appreciate the old Bond, whose primary assets were his brain and his hands, a lot more.

And, oh, yes, there’s a scene in which Bond finally kisses — and perhaps more — Moneypenny. But when you see it, don’t take it too seriously …

⁽¹⁾ I don’t remember “conflict diamonds” being explained in the movie, but I seem to remember reading something about them in the papers; they apparently really exist.

⁽²⁾ Remarkably, considering the current Western attitude towards the nations which have been inadvertently lumped into our Glorious President’s “Axis of Evil”, the film does not take a uniformly condemnatory position towards North Korea, but blames problems on “hard-liners”, among whom one General Moon (Kenneth Tsang), the father of the villain at the beginning of the film, is conspicuously not included, but is shown as a rather sympathetic character.